CHENNAI: Everyone asks us to change, what is it that we change into? You cannot change into a monkey, probably you would like to, but you cannot. Now when you say, I want to change into something — listen to this carefully — if you say to yourself, ‘I must change, I must change myself into something’, the ‘into something’ is a pattern which you have created, haven’t you? Do you see that? Look, you are violent or greedy and you want to change yourself into a person who is not greedy.
Not wanting to be greedy is another form of greed, isn’t it? Do you see that? But if you say, ‘I am greedy, I will find out what it means, why I am greedy, what is involved in it’, then, when you understand greed, you will be free of greed. For example: I am greedy and I struggle, fight, make tremendous efforts not to be greedy. I have already an idea, a picture, an image of what it means not to be greedy.
So I am conforming to an idea which I think is non-greed. Whereas if I look at my greed, if I understand why I am greedy, the nature of my greed, the structure of greed, then, when I begin to understand all that, I am free of greed. Therefore, freedom from greed is something entirely different from trying to become non-greedy. Freedom from greed is entirely different from saying, ‘I must be a great man so I must be non-greedy’.